We’ve finally begun to venture forth, now that Li-Li (the goopy name I seem to like calling him) is approaching a month old. Each outing requires a pack of competent adults to just barely manage these two children. But every trip, I get a little better at figuring out how to do it, and eventually I see that at one point far off in the distant future way over the horizon beyond the rainbow, I will be able to handle them on my own in public. The logistics of double diaper changes, juggling two strollers, and of breastfeeding my fiddly nurser while my other son is ambulatory and in an exploring mood – well, it takes some managing. And if they’re both crying at once – heavens to Betsy, does it absolutely shred my nerves, even when I know they’re both just fine.
Yesterday, we went to the Children’s Museum, and today to the Aquarium. Now if there are two places in the entire city that I thought could possibly have a nursing room or at least some sort of chair in the bathroom for a nursing mother, these two places would be it. Almost no business in the world has nursing accommodations, and although that’s inconvenient for me, I expect nothing different. I don’t expect every restaurant and grocery store to wall off a small area so the tiny percentage of women in the world who happen to be nursing can do it in comfort and quiet – there just aren’t enough of us to warrant the reservation of space. However, there is likely to be a heavy concentration of nursing mothers in places designed for children, and though I’m not outraged or suing anybody or anything, in either of these places I would’ve liked to see even a curtained off dark corner, or at least a chair in the bathroom (it doesn’t even have to be a comfortable chair!) Instead, when I asked at the Information Desk of both places where would be an appropriate place for me to nurse my child, the Info Desk Attendant Person looked completely nonplussed, as if it was a totally unheard of question, and offered (in both cases) – um, I guess the bathroom? So I nursed Liam in the snack area of the Children’s Museum and in the bathroom and later the food court of the Aquarium, and since each of those places was full of screeching children and/or loudly flushing toilets and hand dryers, I struggled to keep him focused and not fussing. Plus I had to do it standing up, trying to hold onto him and keep my nursing cover in place, and never have I more fervently wished to be a mutant four handed person.
But he didn’t starve, nor did he remove any of my nursing body parts with his piranha mouth, though not for lack of trying, as he kept turning his head this way and that at every noise. We won’t be going out for a couple of days now, simply so I can recover.
Other than the nuisance of having to feed this little hungry monkey, a nuisance that I willingly take on so that I can be a properly good and martyred mother figure for the rest of his life, we had a good time. Well. A good ish time. Well. Jack had a completely fabulous time, and I enjoyed watching him lose his mind over the shish and shocks and foggies and kabbs (fish, sharks, frogs, crabs, and yes I am one of those types who spells her child’s childish pronunciations phonetically, but at least I also provide a helpful translation).
Thus endeth my post, in a most unseemly fashion, as both of my babies have simultaneously woken up. And they’re both crying. AUGH. My nerves.